Archive for the 'China' category
Running out of time…
Mon 25, June 2007 23:51:31Global warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it, is hot (pun intended) news these days. Coming from a South European country myself, I usually joke with my Dutch colleagues that global warming is the best thing that ever happened to The Netherlands – the weather is getting hotter and sunnier every year. Which is great, considering that the climate here is pretty much a gray and depressing affair most of the time. I usually start with “we should pollute some more, it’s great for tourism!” and then go on about how the best idea right now is to buy property in the north of Denmark or Finland, since in a few years it will be the next tropical paradise 
Actually, this is no laughing matter, and we all know it very well. The negative effects are pretty obvious – draught, floods, raising sea levels, you name it. But for us, the world-travelers to be, it also means that for some places, we are running out of time. In just a few seconds, I could think of three examples of places that either won’t be there, or will be dramatically changed in a few years by climate change, or the action of man in general:
- The Maldives are sinking
- The Tibetan glaciers are melting (well, they are *all* melting actually)
- The Three Gorges Dam will completely change the Yangtze
Just three simple examples, I’m sure you can find more.
It’s an uneasy feeling – knowing that you either see it really soon, or you’ll never get the chance…
